Rome has been so thoroughly mythologized in films, cookbooks, and a thousand “best of Italy” listicles that the majority of visitors arrive to the city with a fully formed mental image of it. In our experience in our day-to-day job, the expectations are only about 40% accurate. The rest is a composite of things borrowed from other parts of Italy, things invented for tourists, and things that simply don’t exist the way movies (or books) promised. Sorry to have to ruin it for you, but what follows will help you recalibrate!

Let’s start with the cluster of clichés that does the most damage, because each one has been so beautifully rendered on media that it’s hard to believe they might not apply to everyone you meet here during your holiday.

First: the siesta. Wrong word to begin with since it’s Spanish, not Italian. The correct term is riposo, and more importantly, it’s increasingly a thing of the past in the areas where you’ll actually be spending time.  In big cities and all those areas that rely on visitors from abroad to keep afloat, shops and restaurants near major attractions mostly stay open straight through the day now; tourism doesn’t take afternoons off, so why would they? The (AKA riposino, AKA pisolino) survives mainly in residential neighborhoods and it’s a must-have just for a few age groups (older residents or little children).

Then there’s the passeggiata. This is the concept of taking a walk after dinner to digest the evening meal. It’s a romantic image, and to be fair, some people might do this. Many others, however (the majority of the population) would honestly rather die than leave the house again after having spent a good chunk of their day commuting. Also, in some towns in certain areas of Italy it might be more established than in others, but it’s not widespread throughout the country, nor in all neighborhoods.

If you visited Italy before, chances are you saw someone strolling after dinner and thought that’s what you were looking at, but it’s highly likely you simply saw someone on their way to their parked car after a restaurant dinner, or perhaps walking their dog before going to bed.  Bottom line: the passeggiata is not a nightly civic ritual performed by the entire population on command.

And finally, il dolce far niente. This translates as the “the sweetness of doing nothing,” and it’s not an accurate depiction of actual Italian work culture. The truth is that contemporary Romans can only indulge in dolce far niente on weekends, if at all (think grocery shopping for the week, laundry, catching up with family and friends… Who has any time for relaxing?!).

Italy, like any country of sixty million people, is not a monolith — and the version of it sold by decades of cinema, television, and social media narrators is not a census. Somewhere out there there is someone who likes to walk after their meals, does nothing all day or sleeps in the afternoon. But that “someone” is not the majority of the population!

This is the one that trips up the most visitors, because it involves dishes that genuinely are Italian — they just aren’t Roman, and Romans don’t take kindly to having someone else’s specialties imposed on their menu on account of how proud they are of their regional fare.

Lasagna is from Emilia-Romagna, hundreds of kilometers north, and while you’ll find it on plenty of tourist-facing menus in Rome, it’s not part of the city’s culinary identity. Similarly, Tiramisù is from the Veneto. And guess what, it’s a relatively modern invention with zero ancient Roman pedigree despite how often it gets framed as a timeless Italian classic. And cannoli, much as people associate them with “Italy” in a general sense, are Sicilian through and through. Finding a genuinely good one in Rome requires more effort than you’d expect, precisely because it’s not local turf!

What of, and what you should actually be ordering, is its : carbonara, cacio e pepe, amatriciana, supplì, pollo coi peperoni, saltimbocca... If a restaurant’s menu reads like a greatest-hits tour of the entire country, that’s less a sign of generosity and more a sign that you ended up eating at a tourist trap (or where a very lazy chef is working!).

Cafe menus everywhere in the city make it look like Rome runs entirely on cappuccino and cornetto, and to be fair, plenty of Romans do start the day exactly that way, especially when their day starts really early. However, the picture is incomplete. A large number of locals have a different kind of breakfast at home, one that is healthier (by international standards) and less carb-based. Another large number favors something sweet… Just not a version of croissant. What we mean by this perhaps confusing statement is that, although it would be nice to have a one-size-fits-all kind of approach to breakfast in this country, it just isn’t possible to do so. People’s preferences when it comes to daily rituals are just too varied (not just in Rome, and not just in Italy!).

Oh, and when you see locals skip the cornetto altogether and just have the coffee it’s not because they’re averse to eating, it’s because a stop at a café is their first break of the day and they technically already had some food by then. Others indulge in a coffee-cornetto combo, it’s true, but it’s not necessarily the one most people are actually eating on a random Tuesday.

We mostly blame tv and movie studios here: countless movies and TV series have spread the assumption that Romans will greet you with the warm, effusive friendliness often associated with Italian hospitality in general.

As a matter of fact, Romans have a reputation — even among other Italians — for being a bit gruff. Brusque exchanges at the counter, deadpan responses to questions, a general unwillingness to perform enthusiasm on demand: this is closer to the baseline than the perpetually beaming barista or the overeager waiter. You don’t have to worry that it’s you: Romans are not hostile nor they have something personal against you (until they do, and oh boy! You will know the difference then!). It’s simply a different register, more economical with words and warmth than someone from abroad might expect.

Which is exactly what makes it worth the wait: when a Roman does decide to be genuinely warm with you — a real smile, an unprompted tip about a shortcut, a few extra minutes spent explaining something they didn’t have to explain at all — it lands differently. It’s not the default setting, so it feels earned rather than performed.

This one gets repeated so often in travel content that it’s practically become received wisdom, and it drives us up the wall every single time. Yes, fit (and motivated) visitors can walk from the Colosseum to the Vatican in a little over thirty minutes, and yes, the historic center is genuinely compact and a joy to cover on foot. But that’s not “Rome” — that’s a tiny, dense sliver of it, the part that happens to contain the landmarks everyone photographs.

Rome the actual city sprawls for over 1,280 square kilometers, making it one of the largest municipalities in Europe by area. For example, it is many times the size of Paris within its own boundaries. The neighborhoods most tourists visit amount to a blip on that map, a small historic core surrounded by a vast, sprawling metropolitan area most visitors never see and, frankly, often don’t need to.

If your stay involves day trips or anything beyond the tourist core, you will need public transport or a taxi, and pretending otherwise because of something you read in a listicle will only get your feet blistered for no reason (oh, and by the way, do invest in holiday shoes with a good arch support! We think it’s key to a great holiday!).

Rome is not what you saw in a film, cookbook or on someone’s Instagram feed, and it doesn’t owe you that version of itself. In fact, if you do find exactly what you were anticipating, it usually means that someone is trying too hard to please their customers. Arrive with fewer assumptions and you’ll leave with better stories – we can guarantee it!

Interested in a real accommodation when you travel to Rome? — authentic apartments in a Rome that actually exists.